Sunday, November 13, 2005

Getting Gawkered Is So Mid-Late October 2005

It seems I may be getting the hang of this blogging thing.

In October I did a song for Gawker and was pushing to get it plugged. It was picked up by a number of people, but never made the front page.

But nowadays I litter their comment boxes with TAN droppings, and get Gawkered day after day after day. The thing I'm most pleased with is seeing them go from the more formal The Assimilated Negro to the familiar TAN. Only CEO's and old people call me The Assimilated Negro. My dear friends (and by "dear friends" I mean you people I have never met or spoken with outside the realm of my comment box) call me TAN.

The only negative is when I present the printed out Gawker plugs to the checkout girl at my local grocery store, she just blankly stares at me until I take out my wallet and give her cash or a debit card. And that can sometimes take hours. I've even pointed to each letter in the Gawker logo for emphasis, still nothing. *sigh*

I printed that post out for the checkout girl as well, and asked for change. Still nothing.

Anyways, I don't want the Lord of the Backlash to enter the picture, so I've set a date to stop big-upping myself sometime in late 2007. I'll let you know as the time approaches.But since the Vaseline and Jergens are already in use, and since no one comes here unless strangers say nice things about me, I also want to give a shout-out to Elisa Camahort. She had this to say about TAN in her Carnival of Music:

And for new and interesting it's hard to beat The Assimilated Negro, a guy who's been blogging for all of 3 months and has already gotten picked up by Gawker.com. How does he manage that? Oh, by posting his own original hip-hop creations on his blog. And by using said creations to "pitch" his freelance work targets. If nerve.com doesn't take a meeting with TAN after hearing his hip-hop pitch to them, they're smoking crack.

Just a couple points of clarification, I've been up closer to two months, and I actually did the Nerve song a year ago. They did in fact take a meeting. It was fun. (but no sex, which is kind of what you hope for when meeting nerve editors/staff)

But in general Elisa's analysis is keen, insightful, and spot-on.

So this is all to say that there's an interesting (r)evolution going on here at TAN. And I hope people will continue to tune in ...

Finally, on an independent-but-related note, a couple nights ago I went to my first "blogger party." It wasn't billed as such, it was billed as the 30th birthday of Penthouse and Voice sex columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel. But I think if you're a writer/blogger in NYC and you have a birthday party, it automatically becomes a "blogger" party.

I really don't know how I got in that shot (and please don't ask if I'm affiliated with the too-hot-for-tv primary subjects), but what you don't see is that I'm holding printed out copies of my Gawker plugs and asking people for money. But yet and still, nothing.

There were comedians who performed. I thought this guy won the gold star. You might think a guy wearing nothing but a mask, leather jacket, red underwear and socks is a little "gimmicky," but I checked out his blog, and it's stocked with fairly amusing material. His name, by the way, is Todd Levin.

I also met Nichelle, who does a regular female stand-up comedy show called Chicks and Giggles.

I met a couple others, but my fingers have gotten tired. And the police are here. And they're not paying any attention whatsoever to my printed out Gawker plugs.So I'm probably going to jail.

But I hope to be back by Monday.

PS. - I just saw The Apiary also posted about this party, and apparently I should have called the attendees "NYC's power elite." Which means, even though I'm not listed amongst those spotted, you can feel free to call me that as well.

Couldja look at the camera just once? What's with the shifty-eyed vibe? If you can't look the Internets in the eye, then I don't know if the Internets are going to invite you over for Extra Creamy Chocolate ice cream.